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n a rare move, one of al-Qaida's highest-ranking leaders has conducted an on-camera interview with a journalist and, in the process, called for the destruction of Pakistan's government. It was the first time since 2002 that any top al-Qaida official has taken the security risk of sitting down for an interview with a bonafide journalist.Abu Mustafa al-Yazid, an Egyptian whom U.S. intelligence officials have identified as the al-Qaeda's third highest-ranking official, sat for an interview with Najeeb Ahmad, a reporter for Geo TV. Geo TV is a private Pakistani television channel.  In the interview, Yazid, also known as Sheikh Saeed,...

Next 9/11 to come from Fata: US general By Anwar Iqbal WASHINGTON, May 22: A top American general on Thursday endorsed a US intelligence assessment that the next 9/11-type attack on the US soil would come from Al Qaeda bases in Pakistan’s tribal region but urged the United States to increase its security assistance to the country to help it deal with the threat. Gen David Petraeus, a top US military commander nominated to lead the Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Pakistan would be the first country he would visit, if confirmed, to assess its desire...

A senior Taliban commander who became a hero to Islamic militants for his role in shooting down a U.S. helicopter in 2005, killing all 16 special forces troops aboard, has been killed by Pakistani security forces, officials and Taliban militants tell CBS News. Mullah Ismail, a notorious Taliban commander from the Afghan province of Kunar, was killed in a shootout with Pakistani police as he traveled with a kidnapped trader, a local police officer said Wednesday. He was apparently on his way into the lawless Northwest Frontier Province along the Afghan border. Officer Mukarma Khan said Ismail, also known as...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates has signed deployment orders that will send U.S. military trainers to Pakistan this summer, CNN has learned. Their mission: To teach Pakistan Frontier Corps units counterinsurgency skills critical to fighting the Taliban and al Qaeda. Several Pentagon and military officials confirmed the order has been signed although it has not been publicly announced. The deployment will be small -- just about two dozen troops who will stay through the spring of next year, according to the officials. All of this is the first step in a long-term U.S.-Pakistani military program on counterinsurgency cooperation....

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US trainers to help Pakistani paramilitaries WASHINGTON, March 2 (AFP) - The Pentagon is planning to send about 100 US military trainers to Pakistan to assist a paramilitary force that is operating along the border with Afghanistan targeting Al-Qaeda, The New York Times reported on its website late Saturday. Citing unnamed US military officials, the newspaper said that small teams of US special operations soldiers have already been sent to Pakistan to train Pakistani counterterrorism troops. But a classified plan now under review at the US Central Command would increase the contingent of US trainers to about 100, the report...

PESHAWAR - At least 13 militants, including some foreigners, were killed and 11 others were critically injured as three missiles, allegedly fired by the US forces, hit a house in Kaloshah area of Wana District in South Waziristan Agency on Thursday, eyewitnesses said. However, the locals informed that three missiles fired from an unknown direction hit the house of Malik Khel Wazir at Shero Village, Kaloshah Azam Warsak area at midnight, killing at least 12 people, mostly foreigners, and injuring 11 others critically. Exact identity and strength of the foreigners killed in the incident has not yet been determined, but...

PESHAWAR - At least 13 militants, including some foreigners, were killed and 11 others were critically injured as three missiles, allegedly fired by the US forces, hit a house in Kaloshah area of Wana District in South Waziristan Agency on Thursday, eyewitnesses said. Immediately after the attack, the militants encircled the area and local people were barred from entering the site. However, the locals informed that three missiles fired from an unknown direction hit the house of Malik Khel Wazir at Shero Village, Kaloshah Azam Warsak area at midnight, killing at least 12 people, mostly foreigners, and injuring 11 others...

WANA, Pakistan (Reuters) - A missile struck a house in a Pakistani region known as a safe haven for al Qaeda militants early on Thursday, killing at least eight suspected militants, residents and intelligence officials said. The attack took place in near Kaloosha village in the South Waziristan tribal region on the Afghan border. "The blast shook the entire area, about eight people were killed," Behlool Khan, a resident of the area, told Reuters. (Reporting by Hafiz Wazir; Writing by Zeeshan Haider; Editing by Robert Birsel)

QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistani security forces killed a top figure in the Taliban militia fighting U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan and captured four other militants Monday, a military official said. Mansoor Dadullah, brother of slain Taliban military commander Mullah Dadullah, was among five militants caught after a shootout near a seminary in southwestern Baluchistan province around 10 a.m., a local intelligence official told The Associated Press. A senior military official said Dadullah died of his wounds while being flown to a hospital with the other four injured men. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they...

QUETTA, Pakistan - Pakistani security forces critically wounded a top figure in the Taliban militia, among six militants captured after a firefight near the border Monday, the army said. Mansoor Dadullah, the brother of slain Taliban military commander Mullah Dadullah, and five others were challenged by security forces as they crossed from Afghanistan into Pakistan’s southwestern province of Baluchistan. They refused to stop and opened fire, said army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas. “Security personnel returned fire. As a result all of them sustained injuries and all of them were captured,” Abbas said. “Dadullah was arrested alive but he is...

WASHINGTON, Feb 1 (Reuters) - The U.S. success in killing a top al Qaeda operative this week showed that cooperation with Pakistan can be fruitful but security analysts said there were limits to what the present strategy can achieve. Analysts said the unmanned Predator air strike that apparently killed Abu Laith al-Libi in a remote area of Pakistan demonstrated that the United States has the military reach and intelligence sources to carry out a precision attack on a specific target with Pakistani consent. But U.S. participation in a ground offensive against al Qaeda strongholds along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border is unlikely....

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: A U.S. missile strike that killed a top al-Qaida commander at a house with satellite phones and a computer — only two kilometers (1.3 miles) from a Pakistani military base — showed how entrenched Islamic militants are in the country's lawless tribal regions. But the successful targeting of Abu Laith al-Libi also suggests that U.S. intelligence in the area is improving, and that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf seems willing to turn a blind eye to such attacks along the Afghan border if they avoid civilian casualties. Pakistan has yet to confirm al-Libi's death, reported Thursday on Islamic extremist...

WASHINGTON - In a shift with profound implications, the Bush administration is attempting to re-energize its terrorism-fighting war efforts in Afghanistan, the original target of a post-Sept. 11 offensive. The U.S. also is refocusing on Pakistan, where a regenerating al-Qaida is posing fresh threats. There is growing recognition that the United States risks further setbacks, if not deepening conflict or even defeat, in Afghanistan, and that success in that country hinges on stopping Pakistan from descending into disorder. Privately, some senior U.S. military commanders say Pakistan's tribal areas are at the center of the fight against Islamic extremism; more so...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - An Al-Qaeda resurgence in Pakistan's tribal areas has raised deep concerns in the United States, which reportedly is pondering unilateral military strikes in a reflection of increasing impatience over Islamabad's counterterrorism strategy. US military chief Admiral Michael Mullen last week expressed "grave concern" over Al-Qaeda's use of the Pakistani tribal areas as safe havens, saying they posed a "significant" security threat to Afghanistan and Pakistan itself. Also from the vast tribal region in northwestern Pakistan, Osama bin laden's Al-Qaeda could be plotting and training a deadly attack on the United States, similar to the September 11, 2001...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 11 (UPI) -- Most terrorist trails lead back to Pakistan, Britain's MI5 (internal intelligence service) concluded a year ago. An average of some 400,000 Pakistani Brits a year fly back to the old country for vacation or to visit their relatives. From the airports in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad, where they land, side trips to the madrasas -- Koranic schools -- where they were originally radicalized, or to a terrorist training camp in the tribal areas that straddle the Pakistani-Afghan border, go undetected. There is no way to keep track of thousands of passengers arriving from the United...

The Pentagon is "extremely concerned" about the emergence of al Qaeda in Pakistan, Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.... "So, [the Pentagon is] extremely, extremely concerned about that, and I think continued pressure there will have to be brought," he said. Adm. Mullen added, however, that "Pakistan is a sovereign country and certainly it's really up to ... President Musharraf and certainly his advisers and his military to address that problem directly." U.S. intelligence officials suggest that the area is an operational command center for al Qaeda's senior leaders, including Osama bin Laden and his deputy,...

Scotland Yard experts on the case in Pakistan now believe that al-Qaeda assassinated Benazir Bhutto after reviewing all of the evidence. The Times of London reports from sources inside the organization that the investigators do not see any evidence of a cover-up, but of massive incompetence in the hours after the murder, which led to speculation of government involvement: BRITISH officials have revealed that evidence amassed by Scotland Yard detectives points towards Al-Qaeda militants being responsible for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Five experts in video evidence and forensic science have been in Pakistan for 10 days since President Pervez...

I have been saying for months the final operations against al-Qaeda will take place in the tribal regions of Northern Pakistan along the border with Afghanistan. This is the birth place of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and it is their last large sanctuary on Earth now that they are being pushed out of Iraq, Lebanon, Algieria and were unable to create a toe-hold in any other Arab-Muslim country (including Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt which they tried to attack).Walid Phares has a must read history lesson and tutorial on al-Qaeda and Pakistan, which provides the context for the coming final...

SLAMABAD, Pakistan — The Qaeda network accused by Pakistan’s government of killing the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto is increasingly made up not of foreign fighters but of homegrown Pakistani militants bent on destabilizing the country, analysts and security officials here say.In previous years Pakistani militants directed their energies against American and NATO forces across the border in Afghanistan and avoided clashes with the Pakistani Army. But this year they have very clearly expanded their ranks and turned to a direct confrontation with the Pakistani security forces while also aiming at political figures like Ms. Bhutto, the former prime minister who...

Excerpt - DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan: A commander of pro-Taliban militants in Pakistan rejected government claims that he was behind the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, his spokesman said Saturday. The spokesman for Baitullah Mehsud, whom Pakistani authorities describe as an al-Qaida leader, dismissed the allegations as "government propaganda." "We strongly deny it. Baitullah Mehsud is not involved in the killing of Benazir Bhutto," Maulana Mohammed Umer, said in a phone call to The Associated Press from South Waziristan tribal region. "The government is leveling a baseless allegation and we think it is doing so to divert the...

Alleged Al-Qaeda official Mehsud denies killing Bhutto: spokesman Posted: 29 December 2007 1552 hrs PESHAWAR, Pakistan : An alleged Al-Qaeda leader Baitullah Mehsud, blamed by the Pakistan government for killing Benazir Bhutto, denied any involvement in her death, his spokesman told AFP on Saturday. "He had no involvement in this attack," spokesman Maulana Omar said in a telephone call. "This is a conspiracy of the government, army and intelligence agencies." The spokesman said he was calling from Pakistan's Waziristan area, a lawless tribal region where Pakistani government forces have been battling Islamist militants. "It is against tribal tradition and custom...

Al Qaeda is right under Musharraf's nose December 28, 2007 Since 9/11, there has been hardly any jihadi terrorist strike anywhere in the world in which there was no Pakistani connection. Since 2002, there has been hardly any jihadi terrorist strike in Pakistani territory in which there was no connection of the Pakistan army's general headquarters. By GHQ, one does not mean the entire army; one means some elements in the GHQ. The first wake-up call about the possible presence of one or more sleeper cells of Al Qaeda [Images] in Rawalpindi came in March 2003. Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, who...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin Thursday citing an alleged claim of responsibility by al Qaeda for former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's assassination, a DHS official told CNN. But such a claim has not appeared on radical Islamist Web sites that regularly post such messages from al Qaeda and other militant groups. The source of the claim was apparently an obscure Italian news agency, Adnkronos International (AKI), which said that al Qaeda Afghanistan commander and spokesman Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid had telephoned the agency to make the claim. "We terminated the most...

Bruce Riedel a former defense and intelligence official who helped make South Asia policy in the administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, says he believes Benazir Bhutto’s assassination “was almost certainly the work of al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda’s Pakistani allies.” He says, “Their objective is to destabilize the Pakistani state, to break up the secular political parties, to break up the army so that Pakistan becomes a politically failing state in which the Islamists in time can come to power much as they have in other failing states.” He says the United States should press the government of President...

Karachi, 27 Dec. (AKI) - (by Syed Saleem Shahzad) - A spokesperson for the al-Qaeda terrorist network has claimed responsibility for the death on Thursday of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto. “We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahadeen,” Al-Qaeda’s commander and main spokesperson Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid told Adnkronos International (AKI) in a phone call from an unknown location, speaking in faltering English. Al-Yazid is the main al-Qaeda commander in Afghanistan. It is believed that the decision to kill Bhutto, who is the leader of the opposition Pakistan People's Party (PPP), was made by...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Al Qaeda has regrouped in Pakistan's remote Afghan border area and begun to focus attacks on the Pakistani government and military, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Friday. But the Pentagon chief said al Qaeda's activities in Pakistan have not yet affected Afghanistan, where U.S. and coalition forces have faced increased Taliban violence in the past two years. "There is no question that some of the areas in the frontier area have become areas where Al Qaeda has re-established itself," Gates said. "But so far, we haven't seen any significant consequence of that in Afghanistan itself....

SWAT, Pakistan - Muslim extremists are expanding their control of northern Pakistan, challenging the U.S.-backed government of President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and adding to the lands where terrorists allied with Osama bin Laden find refuge. Once restricted to pockets in the mountains along the Afghanistan border, radical mullahs and their followers now wield power in vast areas of northwest Pakistan. They have moved in the past few months beyond the tribal regions and into northern Pakistan cities and the Swat Valley. The increased influence of the Islamic radicals was highlighted this week by intense fighting between local gunmen and government...

LAHORE: An increasing number of militants from Europe are travelling to Pakistan to train and plot attacks on the West, European and US anti-terrorism officials say, according to a report in the LA Times. “There have always been people going to Pakistan, but it is more frequent now,” said a senior French intelligence official who, like others interviewed for the report, spoke on condition of anonymity. “There is a return. It is a cycle ... And you have the attractive phenomenon that all the big chiefs of Al Qaeda are there.” “The emerging route, illuminated by alleged bomb plots dismantled...

An all-out battle for control of Pakistan's restive North and South Waziristan is about to commence between the Pakistani military and the Taliban and al-Qaeda adherents who have made these tribal areas their own. According to a top Pakistani security official who spoke to Asia Times Online on condition of anonymity, the goal this time is to pacify the Waziristans once and for all. All previous military operations - usually spurred by intelligence provided by the Western coalition - have had limited objectives, aimed at specific bases or sanctuaries or blocking the cross-border movement of guerrillas. Now the military is...

US terms Pakistan Al Qaeda ‘safe haven’ By Anwar Iqbal WASHINGTON, Oct 9: The White House on Tuesday released a national strategy for combating terrorism, singling out Pakistan as an Al Qaeda ‘safe haven’, which can be used for launching another 9/11 like attack inside the United States. This is the first time that the country has been named as an Al Qaeda ‘safe haven’ in a White House policy document. Al Qaeda has “protected its top leadership, replenished operational lieutenants, and regenerated a safe haven in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas — core capabilities that would help facilitate another...

Pakistan: Concern over nukes as al Qaeda camps empty US intelligence investigates Pakistan's nuclear security and the military’s loyalty to Musharraf as the Northwest Frontier Province spins further out of control As the security situation in the Northwest Frontier Province continues to deteriorate and President Pervez Musharraf's political stock continues to drop, the US military intelligence community is "urgently assessing how secure Pakistan's nuclear weapons would be in the event President Gen. Pervez Musharraf were replaced." Meanwhile, the Taliban and al Qaeda have dispersed operatives from the training camps in the Northwest Frontier Province and are preparing to fight on...

ISLAMABAD — Pakistani helicopter gunships launched new assaults Saturday on al-Qaida and Taliban hideouts in the mountainous northwest as President Pervez Musharraf prepared to address a peace summit in Kabul. Cobra helicopters killed three suspected militants, pounding what was believed to be their base after a firefight Saturday in Mir Ali town in North Waziristan tribal district, the military said. "A security convoy was passing when an improvised explosive device planted by militants exploded, causing no harm to the security personnel," chief military spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad said. "Armed miscreants then attacked security men with automatic weapons that injured...

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (AFP) - Helicopter gunships pounded suspected Taliban and Al-Qaeda hideouts in northern Pakistan, as the United States called for even greater efforts in the battle against the militants. The military said at least 10 militants were killed in the attack, which also involved ground forces, on a pro-Taliban district in the restive North Waziristan region near the Afghan border on Thursday. Military spokesman Major General Waheed Arshad told AFP the strike was launched after several roadside bomb attacks earlier in the day in the same region wounded four soldiers. In a separate incident in South Waziristan 16 soldiers...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said Tuesday that talk of U.S. military strikes against al-Qaida in Pakistan only hurts the fight against terrorism, and his troops bombarded militant hideouts in their strongest response yet to a month of anti-government attacks. Ten suspected militants were killed. The assault by artillery and helicopter gunships "knocked out" two compounds in Daygan village in the tribal belt near the border with Afghanistan that were being used as staging posts for attacks on security forces, said Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad, the army's top spokesman. Ten militants were killed and at least seven were...

MIRAN SHAH, Pakistan - Government forces attacked two militant bases with helicopter gunships and artillery Tuesday in some of the army's toughest action in the lawless Afghan border region since militant attacks began surging last month. Spokesman Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad said troops targeted a pair of compounds in Daygan, a village 10 miles west of North Waziristan's main town of Miran Shah, after they received credible intelligence that militants were there. President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, a key ally of the United States in its war on terror, is under rising pressure from Washington to crack down on militants in...

Artillery, helicopters assault two camps near the Afghan border As the security situation in North Waziristan and the greater Northwest Frontier Province, the Pakistani military launched an assault on two "militant" bases near the Afghan border. The military struck two Taliban and al Qaeda bases in the village of Daygan with artillery and Cobra gunship helicopters. "No ground forces were used in the assault," the Associated Press reported. The attack, which occurred 10 miles west of Miramshah, lasted four hours. Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad, the chief spokesman for the Pakistani military, has said the attacks in North Waziristan are not...

Pakistan accused Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama of "sheer ignorance" for threatening to launch US military strikes against Al-Qaeda on Pakistani soil. ADVERTISEMENT Obama warned Wednesday that if he is elected president, he would order US forces to hit extremist targets on Pakistan's frontier with Afghanistan if embattled military ruler President Pervez Musharraf failed to act. "Such statements are being made out of sheer ignorance," Pakistan's Minister of State for Information, Tariq Azeem, told AFP. "They are not fully apprised about the ground realities and not aware of the efforts by Pakistan." Islamabad has bristled against a string of similar...

Obama targets al Qaeda in Pakistan for possible military strike Democratic US presidential candidate, Barack Obama has upped the ante in his campaign by toughening his stance on foreign policy. Against the background of debate in Washington over what to do about a resurgent al Qaeda and Taliban in areas of northwest Pakistan, Obama said he would order military action without the consent of Pakistan's...

CAIRO, Egypt: An al-Qaida commander who escaped from a U.S. prison called on Pakistanis in a new Web video to overthrow President Gen. Pervez Musharraf as revenge for the killing of a pro-Taliban cleric in the Red Mosque showdown. The video was issued by Abu Yahia al-Libi, who broke out of the Bagram Air Base prison north of Kabul in 2005 and who Western and Afghan intelligence officials believe has since worked training suicide bombers in a camp in eastern Afghanistan. "O people of jihad (Holy War) in Pakistan ... hurry up and get rid of this corrupt and tyrannical...

Statement by Abu Yahya al Libi contradicts Newsweek report on divisions in al Qaeda over Pakistan policy Al Qaeda has weighed in on the Pakistani government's military assault on the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, in Islamabad last month. As Sahab productions, the media outlet for al Qaeda's central leadership, released a 21 minute tape by Abu Yahya al Libi, a senior al Qaeda leader who has served as a spokesman and released numerous propaganda videos. In the video, titled “Of the Masters of Martyrs,” al Libi praised the followers of the Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa as "martyrs." He...

WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday that he would possibly send troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists, an attempt to show strength when his chief rival has described his foreign policy skills as naive. The Illinois senator warned Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf that he must do more to shut down terrorist operations in his country and evict foreign fighters under an Obama presidency, or Pakistan will risk a U.S. troop invasion and losing hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid. "Let me make this clear," Obama said in a speech prepared for delivery...

The National Intelligence Estimate released July 17 put the problem plainly enough: Al-Qaeda has "regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability" using a new haven in the lawless frontier area of northwest Pakistan known as Waziristan. The question is: What is the United States going to do about it? For those who might have forgotten in the six years since Sept. 11, 2001, what a reconstituted al-Qaeda could do, the intelligence analysts explained that the terrorist group has "the goal of producing mass casualties, visually dramatic destruction, significant economic aftershocks and/or fear among the U.S. population." The analysts noted...

Al-Qa'eda divided over drive to oust Musharraf By Philip Sherwell and Massoud Ansari, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 12:43am BST 29/07/2007 A deep split has emerged within al-Qa'eda over the wisdom of the terror network's drive to overthrow and kill Pakistan's president Pervez Musharraf, according to radical Pakistani Islamists allied to the terror network. 13 people were killed and 50 injured in a suicide attack near the Red Mosque on Friday Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has ordered the series of retaliatory attacks on Pakistani targets that have followed the storming of the Red Mosque, an extremist stronghold in Islamabad,...

WASHINGTON: Independent security experts in Washington are not convinced by the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that accuses Pakistan of facilitating the relocation of Al Qaeda in its tribal areas. They say that the people on the job at the CIA are “incompetent” and not sufficiently experienced to give such sweeping “findings”. “Approximately half of the analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have less than five years on the job,” said Larry Johnson, a former employee of the CIA and the US State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism. “Most of the new hires came on board after 9/11, were new...

Al Qaeda's safe haven in northwestern Pakistan is largely inaccessible to outside forces and unlikely to be eliminated soon by the U.S. or Pakistani military, top intelligence officials said on Wednesday. At a hearing in the U.S. House of Representatives, Pentagon intelligence chief James Clapper said the United States was not content to sit still while the militant network blamed for the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington regenerated its strength in North Waziristan.

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (Reuters) - Several thousand villagers fled a Pakistani tribal region on Wednesday, where an army offensive was expected any day following pressure on Pakistan from the United States to act against al Qaeda cells. Since President George W. Bush spoke on Saturday of being "troubled" by al Qaeda regathering its strength in Pakistan's tribal lands, some kind of counter-terrorism operation has appeared highly probable in North Waziristan. "We have no choice but to pray to Allah for the safety of our lives," said Akbar Khan, a laborer in the main town of Miranshah, worrying that his family risked...

A former Guantanamo Bay prisoner wanted for the 2004 kidnapping of two Chinese engineers in Pakistan blew himself up with a grenade during a clash with security forces on Tuesday, officials said. One-legged Taliban militant Abdullah Mehsud killed himself to avoid capture after troops raided his hideout, interior ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Cheema told AFP. The Islamic rebel's death comes amid intensifying US pressure on President Pervez Musharraf to take military action against Al-Qaeda and Taliban safe havens in tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan. "Abdullah Mehsud blew himself up with a grenade and died when security forces raided...

AL-QAEDA’S leadership secretly directed the Islamic militants whose armed revolt at the Red Mosque in Islamabad ended last week with more than 100 deaths after it was stormed by the Pakistan army. According to senior intelligence officials, the troops who finally took control discovered letters from Osama Bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. They were written to Abdul Rashid Ghazi and Abdul Aziz, the brothers who ran the mosque and adjacent madrasah. Government sources said up to 18 foreign fighters � including Uzbeks, Egyptians and several Afghans � had arrived weeks before the final shootout and set up firing ranges to...

Text of report by Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency Peshawar, 14 July: A suicide attack has killed at least eight Pakistani soldiers. According to reports, a suicide attack was carried out on a military convoy heading for the Miranshah area from Razmak of North Waziristan at 1120 hours [local time] at midday today, causing serious casualties. Confirming the incident to journalists, the spokesman for Pakistani army, Maj Wahid Arshad, said: A suicide bomber struck his vehicle against a military convoy, killing eight soldiers and wounding 20 others. He added that two military vehicles were destroyed in the suicide attack....